Meet Sebastian Baier – In every crisis lies the seed of opportunity

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Today we have selected Sebastian Baier to take his interview. He is the CEO of re7consulting Romania.

First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?

We are fine according to the circumstances. We are lucky that more and more companies want to use digital marketing in these times when it is not possible to meet customers directly. We see this crisis as an opportunity to grow together even more as a team and to put the agency on a growth path for the next few years.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company?

When I was studying international business administration, I founded the agency in Germany together with my business partner Ronald Erb in 2011. In 2015 we decided to start an agency in Bucharest. I then moved to Bucharest to focus on the agency in Romania. My partner Ronald focuses on the agency in Germany.

Our agency has continuously developed since 2015. This is not least thanks to my business partner Alexandra Lovin, who helped bring the agency forward from day 1. One of our highlights was, for example, our digital campaign for the sold-out Bon Jovi concert in Bucharest in 2019.

How does your company innovate?

I take the time to create an individual development plan for each employee, part of which focuses on innovation in the employee’s special area and how we can use the new technology for ourselves. These goals are part of the development plan so that we can continue to develop our company.

I also buy a lot of books on current topics for our team and we visit or currently watching the most important international conferences in the field of digital marketing.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

The coronavirus only affected our event business, so we couldn’t advertise any concerts. Fortunately, other industries have approached us so that we can promote their products, especially from the retail sector. So it was possible for us to increase our sales and hire more employees in 2020.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?

The difficult decision for us was how to deal with the crisis and what to do. For example, during the crisis, we held free webinars to show companies how they can win customers over the Internet despite the crisis. Furthermore, last year we decided to invest massively in further training and to further expand our knowledge in order to set ourselves apart from the competition and deliver the best quality to our customers.

What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?

We especially used Zoom in the crisis, since we worked from home then and still today, this is a great help both internally with employees and externally with customers. We also use tools from the cloud such as Dropbox, Microsoft365, or ClickUp so that we can work and have access from anywhere in the world. When choosing our tools, it was important to me that a new employee set up his workstation on every computer in the world within a maximum of 10 minutes. Of course, the emphasis was also placed on IT security to prevent misuse.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?

All digital marketing agencies have set themselves the goal of providing their customers with highly professional campaigns and with first-class design.

Your Final Thoughts

My final thought relates to future developments in the field of automation and artificial intelligence, not only in the field of digital marketing. Many industries are facing major changes and should deal with this topic to remain competitive.